Kala ubass on Swedish tour and Live CD

If you follow playubass on Facebook you might have seen some posts about a recent tour I did in concert halls from the north to south of Sweden. The tour that started in October last year finished with a sold out show in the prestigious Berdwalldhallen, home of the Swediah Radio Symphonic Orchestra in Stockholm. All in all we played 18 shows.
On the first four shows I used my Bakithi Kumalo signature solid body for six of the 18 songs in the show that celebrated the life and music of Ted Gardestad. More about Ted and his brother in the sidebar! When the tour continued this spring I also added my spruce fretless. I used that on two of the six songs I played the Bakithi ubass.*
We recorded quite a few of the shows on multitrack and released a live CD in April.

At the moment this live CD is only available at our live shows.

I have made snippets of the songs that I played ubass on so you can hear how, in my opinion, beautifully the sound of the ubass sits in the overall sound of these songs.
I will probably make lessons based on these songs. Please let me know if there is any particular song you want me to do first!
Now let’s take a look and listen to the songs that feature bass parts played on a ubass.

SongsChapeau Claque (Bakithi Kumolo Signature Solid Body Ubass) This song is so much fun to play. It really takes a while getting used to the combined meters thoughout the song! I used the solid body here relying on its warm and round sound!

Angela (Bakithi Kumolo Signature Solid Body Ubass) This song is a bit folky and I go ”full country” with a root-five motion in the verses! Since I didnt bring a P-bass [Fender Precision Bass] on the tour the solid body doubles as one. and does a very good job! [ In my Kala SUB vs. Kala California video I compare the California solid body and the SUB with a P-bass if you want to hear musical examples played on all these three instruments. ]

Äntligen på väg [Finally on our way] (Spruce fretless acoustic/electric Ubass) For the ”unplugged” feel of this song the acoustic/electric was a easy choice. It sounds perfect here and it also looks killer!

När showen är slut [When the show has ended] (Bakithi Kumolo Signature Solid Body Ubass) Once again I’m looking for a P-bass-ish sound.

Satellit [Satelite] (Bakithi Kumolo Signature Solid Body Ubass) This song is SO much easier to play on a ubass compared to a regular full scale electric bass! I also sing backup vocals on this one and the extended fingering I use makes it easy to focus on both bass part and vocal part since I don’t have to look at the Ubass during the choruses because I don’t need to do any position shifts. I first used this approach when we did concerts back in 2012 featuring this song. You can actually learn this song if you want. Check out this lesson: Part 1 | Part 2. Singing the chorus while playing the bass part is optional but a really good challenge!🙂 Read even more here!

Jag vill ha en egen måne [I want my own moon] (Spruce fretless acoustic/electric Ubass) For the encore I use the acoustic/electric again. It feels so good the let people have the ”sight memory” of this wonderful instrument in their minds as they leave the concert hall🙂

Sidebar

Ted Gardestad and his brother Kenneth wrote a lot of wonderful music that I cherished by a lot of the Swedish population. The keyword for all the songs is LOVE. And the songs all have a warm felling about them, no harch words…The songs range from really happy ones to more deep sounding lyrics. The brothers recorded their own demos and wanted to play these for record companies. They ended up at Sweden music and Benny Andersson and Stikkan Andersson. The musicians and singers on the first albums are quite well known throughout the world. I only need to say one word any you will know who they were……ABBA!

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